


My Holodrama Is Like Life

by leiamoody



Series: Originals [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hidden Future Jedi, Hollywood in the GFFA, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-15
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-08-15 04:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8042887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiamoody/pseuds/leiamoody
Summary: An actress writes about her existence, including the frustrations of the industry and the pursuit of something higher in life.





	1. Early afternoon, after a frustrating morning and exhausting night before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic started as a Dear Diary Challenge entry for 2016 on TFN. Discontinued over there, continued here for reasons of continuity. (That makes no sense, I know).
> 
> Yes, it's an OC driven fic, yes it's written by someone who is boring and pretentious, etc. so on and so forth. Be warned.

The scene opens on a young actress sitting in her agent's office at nine in the morning. An extra large travel mug of Jimicia Green Mountain kahve sits on the right corner of the agent's desk, keeping a Dalonian crystal paperweight and a small wooden box of cigars company. The actress is slouched in a red overstuffed chair, wearing sunglasses because she had a long night at Opticsolar. (No, the actress is not old enough to drink, but she was part of a large group who left yet another premiere of some holofilm that will be forgotten in a month...for the record, the actress did not kick down anything alcoholic. She has a father back home she doesn't want to disappoint).

Okay, so I was the actress sitting in the agent’s office. I’ve been doing some amateur screenwriting during those hours when I’m not on set and figured this was a good place to make a first attempt at writing from third person POV. So it’s not perfect. From now on I’ll write in first person.

Back to that meeting at Shen’s…Shen Mekori is my agent, unofficial uncle and official birth sponsor. He was Mom’s agent once upon a long ago, so it made sense he would look after my career. At least it was a little easier hearing the bad news from him. It wasn’t about getting a tabvid reporter catching me during the club crawl. I’m not worried Dad would believe any crap that gets posted on the Holonet. Some might believe I was getting drunk and doing every drug known to the Core, others won’t care about what the actions of a random minor celebrity. The bad news was about a series I wanted to do.

Let me provide a quick version of dialogue to describe how the meeting went down:

 **SHEN:** I didn’t mean to get you out of bed soon after you fell into it. But I received the news overnight from Nimon and felt it would be unfair to keep you waiting.

 **ME:** It’s not gonna be filmed.

 **SHEN:** Unfortunately. We’ve had a major falling out because of the director. He’s unhappy with the script and wants to bring his own team onboard to completely tear it apart and put something new together. I’m sorry, but it’s the nature of this business.

Yeah, it’s the nature of the business for ego-tripping idiots to have their own agendas that get in the way of productions. I spent months training in _Teräs Käsi_ for this show. I really love it because it gets rid of every last ounce of aggression that builds up during the week. The series was supposed to be some action production about a girl recruited to become a secret agent. It sounds terrible in writing, and probably wasn’t going to be much better in holographic form, but I still wanted to do it.

 **SHEN:** At least you still have _New World_. Shen’s been doing this agent stuff longer than most others, except for Swifty Lasar (but he’s a Wookiee), so he doesn’t get rattled when things go wrong. He would be the kind to view having any kind of project as good, because so many actors don’t get to work right now because of the Empire. But the fact I’m on a contrived romdram is frustrating.

 **ME:** It’s just money.

 **SHEN:** You are getting a higher rate.

 **ME:** Because my name’s in the top credits. Which makes me a star, although that isn’t much of a status symbol.

 **SHEN:** That should not matter to you.

 **ME:** Why not? That was a stupid question. Being important never meant anything to me before. I’ve always been more concerned about giving a good performance that entertains while challenging me as a person. When did the money and prestige suddenly become a concern?

I don’t know. I’m going back to bed. It’s not like I’ve got anything important scheduled for today. 


	2. Half past ten in the morning, between Takes 14 and 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every character has a backstory...Nalieza talks about her own background.

Every main character has a backstory. Since I’m the central protagonist (“protagonist” sounds really noble, doesn’t it? Like I’m on some grand adventure instead of just going through the motions every day! But I’m in the holofilm industry, and we’re supposed to be all about creating the amazing and impossible…but my story is really average…yet the “everyday hero” is always popular…)

My first memory is the sound of ships arriving and departing from the spaceport on Aeithera. I was two years old, and my father had gone there after Mom died. He needed to get away from Lacace, and couldn’t go back to Ultraia. So he accepted a job offer in the History department at the Cultural University (he is a professor of Pre-Republic History) and moved us there. That’s why my first memory is the sounds of arriving and departing ships; Dad spent a couple hours hanging around Krisoti Spaceport trying to get his head together before going to our new house.

Pretty soon afterward G'mata Lorela moved in with us. Dad sent me off to a private day school when I was six because he wanted me to be around kids my own age. I grew up surrounded by love but not people. Since I'm Ultraian by genetics, I prefer my own company. Dad and Mom both like/liked spending time in the midst of their favorite objects. Dad has a bunch of antiques in his office, while Mom had her paintings in the little room where she practiced dreamwork. I have an ever-growing collection of holofilms that keep me company. It was years before I realized the significance of my connection to flickering images of fictional people and places.

I always felt different from other kids, and even adults, but I didn't understand why until years later. So I followed Dad's example and kept my distance, which was okay for the both of us. But the fact I played alone, created my own worlds bothered G'mata. She took me out to different homes of children of other university professionals in order to play with their kids. It gave her chances to leave the house and talk with others. She left all her family and friends on Ultraia when she came to live on Aeithera. At least she got something from those visits. G'mata's efforts were kind, but her efforts to give me childhood friends failed.

Dad sent me to a private school in the city instead of somewhere more prestigious like the Pallas Academy. Again I suffered from isolation, and six years old wasn’t too early for me to understand the reason. It was a trait I shared in common with Mom: some weird connection to a great energy that the Jedi used to call "The Force".

I do go out with some acquaintances from around the industry. Garon Vale is the guy I'm currently dating...the young man who gets seen with me out in public when I'm not hanging out in a crowd of industry kids...do I call him my boyfriend? I really like hanging out with him...he's the person I'm closest to on Lacace other than Shen. We met on the set of his first music video, back when he was aiming for a decent multimedia deal. I don't normally go dancing around in other people's vids, but I agreed to appear in Garon's vid for charity. We started talking on the set and realized we're both performers who don't like being caught up within this industry. We connected, I danced, and one year later I hate calling him "boyfriend". That word is juvenile and makes it seem like we're two kids who don't take anything seriously. Plus there's something permanent about calling him...do I love him? If I need to ask, then probably not.

(Now I've got a wandering narrative. Either I keep rambling on about my whatever-it-is relationship with Garon, or I acknowledge that Force connection. I don't want to write or even think about that last part. Too dangerous.)

So how did I wind up on Lacace? I was born here, then came back ten years later to start appearing on New World as the long-lost daughter (Niddry Rone) of my mother's long-disappeared character (Selan Rone). (The producers decided to say her character was kidnapped instead of allowing her to die. I wish real life had the same option). How does any character disappear/get reconstructive surgery/ suffer memory loss/ develop multiple personalities/become possessed by demons/ any other crap that gets dreamed up by bored writers? It usually happens offscreen!

Anyway...I'm blonde for the next couple months. Niddry (my character) is having personal issues, including the required identity crisis that translates into some alteration of physical appearance. I was born with black hair, and this dye job is only temporary. But it's still weird looking into the mirror and seeing another version of me staring back. Maybe Niddry will undergo another hair transformation and throw in another color, like Ultra Red Onion Nebula...yeah, I could imagine myself as a redhead...

What else is there to know about me? I currently live in Aurora Canals, where I actually live in a castle! No, really, I live in a house that's shaped like a small castle. It’s about three hundred years old, so obviously I didn’t ask for it to be constructed that way. Aurora Canals is the rare neighborhood on Lacace where natural water still exists instead of artificial structures made from recycled water and duracrete. But that’s your typical city-planet: overdeveloped, overpopulated, and underwhelming (once you get past all the sparkly lights and glowing holographic neon). I love jatz music, something inherited or imprinted into my brain by Dad (probably imprinted because he always plays it late at night when grading assignments). My favorite breakfast/lunch/dinner is rianberry muffins and a liter of Jimicia Green Mountain kahve (the university students back home really like this combo. Dad and Shen both tell me I need a better diet).

The director is looking over at me. We’re ready for another take. More incoherent musings to come later. 


	3. Middle of the night/early, early morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the midst of insomnia, Nalieza tries to figure out what's important to her.

Hello, insomnia.

I can’t sleep.

Again.

Third night in a row.

I’ve decided tonight I’m going to do something different since I’m awake. I’m going to do something practical yet mystical. The Old High Ultraian word for what I want to do is something I can’t remember, but it translates into Basic as “dreamwork”. Dreamwork sounds weird, and does seem odd because you go into someone else’s head and walk around in their dreams. But it actually helps beings with mental problems. It’s usually practiced as part of Ultraian folk medicine, which means most people somehow think it’s strictly religious. But it’s integrated as part of the medical establishment back on the Old World. It’s been practiced for over a thousand years, and there’s a whole bunch of practitioners on the Isoderi side of my bloodlines…including Mom when she lived.

Now I want to begin understanding the process, so maybe I can practice dreamwork one day. But it’s a complicated learning curve. There are written materials available through the Holonet (more precisely, via the Cultural University archives since Dad has security access). It’s easier to learn from one of the aidents (those who practice dreamwork). Most of them live on Ultraia …but that would mean going back to Ultraia. There are some bad memories for me there, due to various personality conflicts with the people who gave birth to Mom (legally known as grandparents, but I cannot think of them as anything more than that).

I'm sitting on the bed with a datafile of the _Tome of Universal Symbology_ and a bag of ground-up sonhar leaves. The universal symbols tome is a book of common dream symbols. Sonhar is an herb used to get someone (in this case, me) into the Dreamscape I'm not sure how the sonhar is supposed to work, except that it's a hallucinogenic. At least I know this stuff either gets smoked (uh, no) or made into a drink called sonhara. I'll go the sonhara route, although it might be hard to find thanatoberries on Lacace, so I can’t follow the original recipe. I'm definitely going to need a lot of sweetener, because sonhar herb is apparently bitter tasting.

Of course there is another way I could enter the Dreamscape, although the Guild of Aidents insist this possibility isn't real. They "recommend" the use of sonhar in order to go from the Awakened State into the Dreamscape. But some practitioners claimed to use the Force instead of sonhar. But the Guild never permitted this during the centuries when Force users were allowed to exist. They've always insisted upon equal access for all dream practitioners as part of tradition. Ultraians always viewed the Jedi with suspicion, and extended that bias toward anyone with Force sensitivity. That prejudice along with the government currently running the galaxy means it’s difficult to prove that sonhar isn’t the only way to get into other beings’ dreams.

But, again, I really need to sleep first.

Plus I need to figure out why I want to do all of this. Maybe I want to understand Mom better. The woman called Maiena Isoderi was an actress/aident/wife/mother has never felt real to me. I've been looking for some real connection with her. The only way I've been able to understand her is through images. Even in real life still holos she was playing a role, hiding depression behind a smile for most of her life.

So I got into acting just like her and now I'm going to study dreamwork? Is that the only reason why I feel the need to do something different? Of course not...right?

This is what happens when you can't sleep, bored with everything, and don't know who you're supposed to be. Yes, a teenage personality crisis.

Everyone has the right to change his or her life, no matter the reason. I shouldn’t feel weird about doing this…although it’s strange that I’m really following too much in Mom’s footsteps. That’s not good. But I could make my pursuit into something different. I don’t know how. Yet.


End file.
